New Way To Stimulate Aural Neurones

[Admiral Valdemar]

Some hope for the likes of me and Shep it seems. Pretty interesting if you ask me and I see benefits outside of the original purpose.

Light-wave implant hope for deaf

An implant which works by firing infrared light into the inner ear is being investigated by US researchers.

Nerves in the ear can be stimulated by light as well as sound and the team from Northwestern University, Illinois, is aiming to harness this.

Infrared light shone onto guinea pig nerve cells produced better results than standard cochlear implants, a report in New Scientist magazine said.

But UK charity RNID said a device for human use might take years to develop.

For some profoundly deaf patients, the development of cochlear implants in recent years has been an important change.

The system works by placing approximately 20 electrodes to directly stimulate the nerves in the inner ear, but it has its limitations, with users finding it hard to appreciate music or communicate in a noisy environment.

This is because there are as many as 3,000 "hair cells" in a healthy ear, contributing to a far more detailed interpretation of sound than the implant can provide.

Frequency maps

Dr Claus-Peter Richter from Northwestern believes that an effect discovered by chance could hold the key to a better implant.

Surgeons who used lasers to perform a surgical procedure in the ear discovered that they were able to stimulate the nerve cells there to send an electrical message back to the brain.

Exactly why this happens is unclear, although Dr Richter believes that the heat that accompanies the light may be responsible.

However, the narrow beam possible using light rather than an electrode offers the possibility of a far more precise targeting of these neurons.

He shone infrared light into the neurons of deaf guinea pigs, while measuring electrical activity in a nerve "relay" between the inner ear and the brain.

The frequency "maps" produced this way are a good indication of the quality of information reaching the brain.

Sharp sound

While the "maps" produced by cochlear implants were less detailed, those produced after infrared stimulation were as sharp as those produced by sound in hearing guinea pigs.

Dr Richter is now working on ways to produce fibre optic devices which could target light within the inner ear.

A spokesman for the UK charity RNID said that cochlear implants had "transformed the lives" of many people and, in theory, this research might offer a way to improve the technology.

"One of the things that is really interesting - if it does work - is that the specificity from a laser is really quite exciting. One of the big problems with cochlear implants is their lack of specificity.

"This could be a major breakthrough, but we have to remember that even if that true, the time between demonstrating this and developing a device will be quite significant, perhaps as much as 10 years."

[Fire Fly]

I recently was at a seminar that was given by someone who talked about brain stimulation research. Deep brain stimulation, which is currently being used on some Parkinson's disease patients, which has demonstrated some success at alleviating the tremor symptoms. Then there's Cranial Nerve Non-Invasive NeuroModulation (CN-NINM) and Brain Port, which are non-invasive techniques which have shown some really remarkable and dramatic results. Here's a video discussing one current usage of the Brain Port technique.

The seminar that I was at used stimulation to the tongue of a patient who had suffered severe whiplash, resulting in very poor balance, inability to look down, severe headaches, and a half dozen other symptoms. Apparently, after only a few minutes of stimulating the tongue, like the Brain Port video shows, the patient was able to walk without aid and demonstrated almost normal balance. Its currently thought that the stimulation of the tongue does something to the vestibular nuclei (involved in balance and motor control), which just so happens to be where the nerves from the tongue are closely connecting to.

This kind of technology has been applied to people who have no deficits at all and its resulted in increased balance and motor control. This has resulted in some serious discussion whether this should be considered a form of sports doping. Other techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can stimulate very deep parts of the brain non-invasively to activate very specific regions of the brain to artificially induce a stimulant or euphoric effect, which would be very beneficial to endurance sports.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I have heard of TMS and related technologies, but the prospect of a miniaturised device like this utilising such an effect to cure a chronic condition is interesting. I had always ignored cochleal implants before, because of the risks in the surgery (it's essentially brain surgery) and the low fidelity of the results from said implant. My right ear has always been almost entirely useless to me thanks to a total mastoidectomy and a failed procedure to replace the bones with synthetics and a tympanoplasty graft. Father had always wanted to spend money on expensive, non-NHS hearing aids no matter how many times I told him it was a redundant gesture even at an early age.

Still, it may be a long time before such technology is able to be used in the skull like this. This new way of interacting with the CNS/PNS certainly opens doors and likely carries, as you say, similar complications for things like sports, just as the new generations of drugs and biologics for augmentation of physical stamina potentially could.

[Singular Intellect]

I personally have 80% hearing loss in my right ear, so this is very interesting news indeed.

[cosmicalstorm]

I've been suffering from Tinnitus (caused by loud noises) for the past decade. I remember an article that showed up about ten years ago where it was detailed how the US Army was developing a method where some kind of liquid was injected into the cochlea allowing the damaged 'hair cells' there to regenerate by removing the free radicals (or something like that). The method was being developed to help those whose hearing had been damaged by gunfire. The results had been very promising, they figured Tinnitus could be alleviated a great deal, maybe even completely healed in som cases. Sadly I've never heard anything about that project since then